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Doubting Mom
And Dad

By

By Jon Kyl

Updated May 8, 1997 12:01 a.m. ET

The declining well-being of America's children has left us asking ourselves, in what by now is a kind of shorthand: What has gone wrong with "the culture"? Dana Mack's answer is contained in the title of her excellent book, "The Assault on Parenthood" (Simon & Schuster, 368 pages, $25). In the schools, in the Child Protective Services bureaus and in the courts there prevails what she calls a "cult of professional expertise" that tells parents in ways both subtle and overt that they are not fit to raise their own kids. The average parent today feels pretty intimidated by the educators,...